Sing Free Now! Blog

Welcome to my Sing Free Now! blog. I’m excited to announce that starting this week I’ll be adding a new blog every Thursday, so be sure to check back each week for tips you can use immediately to experience more confidence in your singing and speaking.

With this blog I’m launching a 10-week series covering my Top 10 Tips for a More Confident Performance. Each week I’ll dive into one of the tips and create a practice goal for that week to help you “own” the new tip.

Want to go deeper with your voice? The pages listed with each tip are where you can find more info in my book Sing Free Now! 3 Steps to Power, Passion and Confidence. Don’t have the book yet? Click here to get a copy.

We love questions and comments--please post them in the discussion section below each blog post and share!

This month we shine the light on a great singer--Haley Johnsen, who recently began working with Mark. An Oregon State grad who sang in college, Haley decide to try out for American Idol this season and impressed the judges enough to make it to Hollywood. With her, rich powerful voice she made it all the way to the semi-finals.

This month of March, 2012 we shine the light on a great singer--Nikki Horner. Nikki's been studying at Bosnian Vocal Studios since 2007 and has developed into a strong, expressive singer with great range and power.

Upcoming Events

Recent Comments

Five Tips for Better Singing

Vocal Registration is like an Automatic or Manual Transmission in a Car

The heavy and light registers of every voice (sometimes called “chest” voice and “head” voice or falsetto) can operate automatically as you sing higher or lower pitches and you can learn to manually shift registers to get different sounds. This gives you the option of sounding the way you want to on any given word or line in a song. The Sing Free Now! Method helps you create many choices—not just one sound when you sing.

Singing in pure heavy register with dark vowel color to establish the strength of the voice. I teach you how to make a tone called “dark vowel color” that will allow you to sing higher notes with more ease and control that you ever thought possible. This teaches the body how to set up for high notes and will allow you to then sing them with whatever tone you want (yes, you can intentionally change the tone of your voice.)

Modifying vowels to “oo” as pitches get higher. This technique will help you to sing high notes easier by slightly changing the pronunciation of vowels. The effects of this are dramatic.

Modifying vowels to “ah” as pitches get lower. This technique will give you stronger and more present low notes.

Singing different ratios of balanced registration. You will be able to blend heavy and light register in whatever ratios you want to create more colors on your palette to paint with. Another way to have many options with which to sing—not just one “right” sound that most voice teachers demand you use.

Using Scales of 1-to-10 for the Bridge to Communicate to the Engine Room

If you think of your body as if it were the crew in the engine room of a ship and your mind as if it were the captain of the ship, you can learn to send commands to your body and get the vocal results you desire. I teach you how to assign a number on a scale of 1-to-10 to any vocal element so that the crew in the engine room knows exactly what your intention is. With the Sing Free Now! Method you’ll just have to picture the sound you want and your body will make that sound.

Tell the Story of the Song and Get Your Audience Rooting for You

Through song analysis and dynamics exercises I will show you how to introduce emotion and style to your singing. This allows you to connect the story of the song to your audience--your main job as a singer. If the audience is captivated by your story-telling, perfect delivery becomes less critical and you leave the audience wanting more.

Learning about The Vocal Defense Mechanism and How to Override it

We all have a Vocal Defense Mechanism (VDM) that is a subconscious system working to protect you from harming your voice, from embarrassing yourself, and from working too hard during singing. Singing a loud note, singing a high note, or singing anything that seems in the least bit threatening can trigger this mechanism. It often sabotages your singing, making it harder for you to do what you want with your voice. The Sing Free Now! Method shows you how to override the VDM so that you can sing what you want to sing the way you want to sing it.

Using Interim Sounds vs. Always Going for Performance Sounds

It is often easier and faster for you to develop a performance sound by practicing a sound you would not perform with. This sound may seem unmusical to you at first but it will develop the strength, coordination, and control you need to make the performance sound you want. It will get you to that point more quickly than banging your head against a performance sound that you cannot make at first.